— and the accompanying rise in state-tolerated nationalism over territorial disputes, with Japan especially — as it prepares to hold its 18th party congress from November 8 to select its new leadership for the next 10 years.

"/>— and the accompanying rise in state-tolerated nationalism over territorial disputes, with Japan especially — as it prepares to hold its 18th party congress from November 8 to select its new leadership for the next 10 years."/>Mao’s Spectre in Today’s China - ET Blogs

Mao’s Spectre in Today’s China

An interesting incident happened during a lecture event in China’s Hainan University earlier this month, the video of which went viral on the country’s cyberspace before state censors took it down.

Sima Nan, a prominent social commentator and votary of the New Left, a neo-Maoist faction in the Communist Party of China (CPC), had just finished his lecture. During the question-answer session, a student stood up and launched a broadside against the Maoist ideology, calling it a threat to whatever individual freedom and liberties the Chinese people enjoyed today. As he rambled on to make the point that the New Left thinking is an enemy of the people and only democracy can protect civil liberties, Sima interrupted the student and asked him to specify his question. “My question is, ‘can I throw my shoe?’” the student asked, and to the cheers of the packed hall, went on to do just that.

Shoe-throwing might have outlived its novelty as front-page news, but the fact that someone could slander in this fashion the vision Chairman Mao once laid out for China, and then get away with it, represents the giant leap forward individual freedom took in China since the loosening of economic and political controls after the Great Helmsman’s death in 1976. The incident also provides us with a glance into the ideological tension within the CPC — and the accompanying rise in state-tolerated nationalism over territorial disputes, with Japan especially — as it prepares to hold its 18th party congress from November 8 to select its new leadership. When one-party states stoke patriotism to bolster regime legitimacy, nationalism is suspect.

We already know who the next top Chinese leaders would be. Vice-President Xi Jinping would replace Hu Jintao as the CPC general secretary after the congress (and become state president next March), while Vice-Premier Li Keqiang will take over as Prime Minister from Wen Jiabao. Suspense, however, has been built over the likely composition of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, the de facto supreme decision-making body. It is anticipated that to smoothen the consensus-building process — or collective leadership, through which the party and the country function — the Standing Committee membership would be reduced to seven from the current nine.

That makes sense for the party. Till February this year, one worthy candidate to the reshuffled Standing Committee in November was Bo Xilai, the ‘princeling’ holding an important position as the party chief of Chongqing municipality. But somewhere, his political enemies were smiling as Bo became ever more loquacious about Maoist revivalism and went on to make a mess of his tenure in Chongqing. A takedown was waiting to happen: and what the state media called the Bo Xilai incident that erupted in February this year was China’s biggest political scandal that grabbed global attention since the trial of Gang of Four in 1980, after Deng Xiaoping’s reformist faction turfed out the Maoist cult from power.

Though Bo himself is yet to appear in court, the prosecution of other principal actors in the scandal – his wife Gu Kailai and one-time loyalist Wang Lijun – could do only so much damage to a judicial system that was as devoid of real independence as it was during the Gang of Four show trial. But this time, as it scurried to put the Bo case behind before the party congress, a few fault lines within the party became apparent. One, it was no coincidence that Bo’s expulsion from the party and the date of the party congress were announced in the same Xinhua release on September 28. That showed the urgency to keep a lid on factional fight and show the face of unity. Two, the focus was not on policy or political errors on Bo’s part, which were legion, but on charges such as abuse of power, involvement in a murder, corruption and even womanising. Third, factional politics was definitely involved in the case. Given the state of rule of law in China, any leader starting from the very top could be tainted with same charges — corruption and disproportionate family wealth, for sure — and imprisoned.

Despite the ouster of Bo, the New Left still remains a potent force, and the show of unity at the party congress will be a façade. The bigger problem is that the CPC is squeamish to confront Mao’s brutal legacy. That’s the main reason why the New Leftists, as defenders of Mao’s orthodoxy, could hijack the debate on sensitive topics like widening social unrest bred by income disparities, which they blame on economic liberalisation. Yet, it’s hard to see how a return to the idea of perpetual socialist experiment — the catastrophic Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, among them — could save China. Or, a stronger role for the state for economic planning. Forward movement on reforms would be in peril unless CPC radically revises its concocted official estimation of Chairman Mao as “70% good, 30% bad” and removes ‘Maoist Thought’ as an article of faith.

The 18th party congress gives the CPC a good opportunity to be publicly honest about Chairman Mao.

Author

The author, a former Economic Times editorial staffer, is a writer and editor living in Delhi.
You can write to him at: rajiv.jm@gmail.com or connect him through Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/Rajiv.JayaramMenon

The author, a former Economic Times editorial staffer, is a writer and editor living in Delhi.
You can write to him at: rajiv.jm@gmail.com or conn. . .